Second Generation of Cisco UCS

Cisco Systems, Inc. announced innovation and additions to its Data Center 3.0 portfolio, designed to reduce IT infrastructure cost and complexity, provide better support for data center virtualization, and improve business agility to deliver competitive advantages.

The centerpiece of this announcement is the second-generation Cisco Unified Computing System, which further accelerates the promise of virtualization, delivering a high performance computing architecture uniting compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single energy-efficient system. The next generation two-socket and four-socket server additions to the Unified Computing System portfolio offer up to 50 percent more processor cores, 300 percent greater application performance, and four times the standard memory footprint, providing the ideal platform for the majority of enterprise workloads. The company also expanded the Cisco Nexus portfolio with the Nexus 2248 and Nexus 2232 fabric extenders, delivering cost-effective, industry-leading capacity with 10-Gigabit Ethernet to the data center.

With these innovations,
the Cisco data center architecture now delivers:

• Up to four times the compute capacity in the same footprint, compared to first-generation Cisco Unified Computing System servers
• Up to four times the bandwidth capacity in the same footprint with the existing chassis, compared to first generation Cisco Unified Computing System
• Up to 92 percent fewer points of management than legacy networks
• Up to 30 percent greater application throughput with the Cisco Virtualized Interface Card
• Up to 76 percent greater database consolidation with Cisco memory extension
• Up to 10 percent reduced power consumption, compared with like-for-like competitive configurations

These results translate to reduced infrastructure complexity and sprawl, significantly reduced costs, and improved business agility. Consequently, businesses and organizations around the globe are adopting Cisco’s data center architecture..

Cisco UCS Manager Enables Faster Software Integration

• Cisco has expanded the Cisco Developer Network to include support for companies that are developing to the UCS Manager XML API (Application Programming Interface).  Developers now have access to online self-help tools, training videos, sample code, developer community forums, and Unified Computing System labs for development and testing.
• Using the UCS Manager XML API developers can access a wealth of interface points: over 9,000 manageable parameters.
• Because of this richly supportive environment, the Cisco Unified Computing System now has a rapidly growing developer community.
• Cisco is also working closely with leading systems management vendors such as BMC, CA, HP, Microsoft and VMware to provide integrated solutions with Cisco UCS Manager.
• With its open API approach and broad partnering strategy Cisco addresses the majority of provisioning tools in use today.

Additions and Enhancements
to Cisco Data Center 3.0 Portfolio

• Cisco’s next generation Unified Computing System M2 B-Series and C-Series two-socket servers are based on the new Intel Xeon 5600 Processor Series. Featuring 50 percent more processor cores and cache, combined with Cisco’s extended memory and virtualization-aware networking, the next generation servers deliver best-in-class operational scale and efficiency. The new servers have been shipping since late-March.
• Cisco Unified Computing System B-Series and C-Series four-socket servers are new additions available in Q3 FY2010 that round out the Cisco portfolio. Incorporating the new Intel Xeon 7500 Processor Series, they perform more than three times better compared to traditional four-socket systems, with double the memory capability and a nine times increase in memory bandwidth. The new servers feature Cisco’s innovative unified computing architecture and simplified management to deliver a cost-effective, reliable alternative to many RISC-based systems.
• The new Cisco FEX-link architecture, incorporated into both Cisco Nexus and Cisco Unified Computing System Fabric Extenders, provides an open, flexible server access layer that now supports any  fabric, with 100Mb, 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet, native Fibre Channel as well as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE.), InfiniBand over Ethernet, iSCSI and NAS. Cisco FEX-link simplifies management and is currently supported on the Cisco Unified Computing System and Cisco Nexus 5000 Series, with availability soon on the Nexus 7000 Series switches.  In addition, FEX-link architecture will enable the Cisco Unified Computing System to offer up to 160Gb of bandwidth per blade in the coming year.
• The new generation of Cisco Nexus fabric extenders, the Nexus 2248 and Nexus 2232, provide IT managers increased flexibility and scalability for heterogeneous environments, and reduce cabling up to 70 percent, power and cooling up to 30 percent, and capital expenses up to 40 percent.
• IT managers can reduce data center power consumption by over 10 percent with like-for-like compute, memory, and I/O configurations per blade, using Cisco Unified Computing System’s superior architecture. By uniting compute and network, fewer components are needed, and the system’s greater performance enables consolidation onto fewer systems. The unified fabric, high efficiency airflow, and Samsung 1.35V DIMMs also help reduce power consumption. Samsung’s 40nm-class DDR3 memory technology can also extend overall system scalability, efficiency and performance.
• Cisco UCS Manager helps create greener data centers: Intel’s new Xeon 5600 Processor Series enables better CPU power management yet IT managers have been reluctant to use hardware-centric power control solutions because they lack visibility into applications running on the hardware, and could inadvertently slow down critical applications. Using UCS Manager, IT administrators can now intelligently bind power and cooling policies to UCS Service Profiles for server provisioning. With this innovation, IT staff can align power consumption with workload requirements, dynamically assigning capacity with push-button simplicity. IT managers can now confidently implement power management policies to create greener data centers, without fear of negatively impacting business applications.
• The new Cisco Nexus 1010 Virtual Services Appliance supports virtualization environments with improved performance, availability and flexible services.
• The new Cisco MDS 9148 Multilayer Fabric Switch is optimized for space and power, with 48 8Gb Fibre Channel ports per rack unit, providing the highest bandwidth density in the industry. The new switch offers flexibility for virtual server environments, enterprise-class security and availability, plus easy cost-effective scaling from 16 to 48 ports with on-demand eight-port upgrade licenses. New 8Gb Fibre Channel uplinks for server access have also been added to the Nexus 5000 Series and UCS 6100 Series interconnects.
• Cisco Services:  Cisco is introducing an updated portfolio of Virtualization Services to help companies successfully adopt and integrate Cisco data center solutions, including the Cisco Unified Computing System, so they can more rapidly realize the benefits of the Data Center 3.0 architecture. Cisco’s expanded application services capabilities, offered together with our partners, help companies migrate applications from legacy architectures to a unified computing architecture.

"Cisco is committed to delivering architectural innovation and value to our customers, while also expanding the breadth and depth of our partner ecosystem," said Soni Jiandani, vice president, Cisco Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group. "Cisco Unified Computing System innovations, such as memory expansion and the Virtualized Network Interface Card, combined with the power of the Intel Xeon 5600 Processor Series, have made Cisco Unified Computing System the leading platform for running the most important business applications."